


never gonna stop until we shatter

by edelwoodsouls



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Atypical Joan Bright, F/M, Pre-Canon, Sort Of, might make multi-chapter, the am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28418766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edelwoodsouls/pseuds/edelwoodsouls
Summary: Joan is atypical, and Owen is hiding her brother in the basement. In retrospect, they were always heading for this.[or: Everything falls apart in March][for The Bright Sessions Secret Santa 2020]
Relationships: Joan Bright/Owen Thompson | Agent Green
Kudos: 11





	never gonna stop until we shatter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhatsATerrarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatsATerrarium/gifts).



> sorry this is a few days late, but happy holidays!! hope you enjoy ^_^  
> title from shatter (in strange woods ep. 2)

He first notices it one week in March.

It’s the little things, at first. The way Joan flinches when she brushes past people in the corridor, or shakes a person’s hand. The way her eyes will go distant, miles away from herself, only to return moments later, blinking as if waking from a dream.

The way she’s started frowning, narrowing her eyes at every individual she passes. Joan’s always seen people as puzzles, but now it’s as if she’s missing pieces, attempting to fit together parts that were never meant to fit.

She comes in late to work, twice in a week. Just five minutes, and she slips in without fanfare, brushing any enquiries away with a breezy apology, a self-deprecating laugh. _Just the traffic_ , she shrugs, and, _You know how the queues are at the Starbucks_.

Joan Bright has never been late in the five years he’s known her.

And then there’s- _them_. Owen has always believed that his relationship with this astonishing, fierce woman was little more than hourglass sand between his fingers, a ticking clock set mere seconds from midnight.

But he’s also always believed in the romance of it all. Their stolen moments in the corners of this labyrinthine building, holding hands underneath the desk, candlelit dinners after work. Weekends spent at her apartment, curled up on her ridiculously high thread count bed as she attempted to convince him to love musicals, as he sat through _Singin’ in the Rain_ and watched her mouth every word.

Their cooking nights after a long day at work, sick of takeout and attempting to make a meal from scratch. How he'll manage to burn the rice and she'll empty half a jar of chilli into the mix, watching with laughter as his eyes widen in fear. How he'll double the amount of sugar in the cookies, and she'll down a shot of whiskey to cope after the first bite.

Now he's pretty sure she hasn't eaten properly in months. There's a tremor in her hands, when she curls her fingers around the coffee she grabs instead of lunch, if she remembers at all. There are dark, bruise-like smudges hanging heavy beneath her eyes.

It’s all probably because of the workload, he reasons. Ellie’s been cracking down on things, and with the new influx of patients in the lower tiers, of course Joan’s being put through the ringer. She’s just tired, just stressed. He shouldn’t take it personally, or read too much into it. Everything is fine.

It’s also probably because of Mark. No, it’s _definitely_ because of Mark, as much as Owen tries to shove that fact into several boxes, locked away in the corner of his mind.

But she hasn’t mentioned it to him, yet, and he doesn’t know how to bring it up. Better that they have no reason to talk about his girlfriend’s brother, so he has no reason to lie to her.

It doesn’t change the guilty flip his stomach makes every time he watches Joan slump into her seat opposite him, brushing loose hair away from tired eyes. Every time he pulls away from her and she frowns, confused, but too hazy to argue.

He doesn't put it together for a while. Chalks all her strange behaviour up to stress, and his own paranoid bias.

Until one particularly long day. She sits down heavily in her chair, upsetting her coffee cup all over a nearby file.

"Fuck," she breathes, running a frustrated hand through her hair. "Just what I need."

"Let me grab some towels," he offers, eager to do anything he can to help her. He all but runs to the bathroom, snatches a wad of paper, and walks ever-so calm back to their desk.

"Here," he leans down beside her, pressing the towels against the darkening stains. "I'm sure it's fine. You can always reprint the file pages, right?"

"Thanks," her hands reach to grab a towel. For just a second, their hands brush together. The skin-on-skin contact is like electricity. She flinches back suddenly, drawing her hands into her lap.

"You okay?" he frowns, balling the towels up and lobbing them vaguely towards the bin. All his focus on the tense set of Joan's jaw, the distance in her eyes.

"Yeah," she shrugs, a manufactured ease settling like a rictus on her features. "Long day, y'know? Frustrating patient."

"Oh? Tell me." He sits back down at his desk, watching the way her hands flit from sorting randomly through papers to fiddling with her hair, to disappearing below the desk. Distracted, nervous gestures.

She sighs. "I just- I want to help her. If we could just break through the block, talk about that one thing she's buried and refuses to mention, we could make some real progress. Right now it's all evasion and diversion, and we've been at this for months. And I _know_ what-"

She cuts off. A panicked- no, _terrified_ expression flits across her face.

"Anyway, how're you?" she asks suddenly, intently focused on her fingers, on anything but him.

"Same as always, I suppose. Overworked and underpaid."

"Aren't we all?" she laughs, a surprisingly bitter sound, but for just a moment they are sharing this. It feels almost comfortable, familiar. "And how're your parents?"

The moment shatters. He frowns at her. Just a few nights ago, his mother had called to announce that she and his father have decided to move to Australia. It had come out of the blue, and he still hasn't quite internalised the information - hasn't really had time to think through how he feels, if he's honest.

He also hasn't told anyone about it. And Joan has never asked about his parents before. Ever.

"They're okay," he says slowly. "I think. I haven't heard from them in a while, actually."

"Oh. Really? I thought you mentioned something, a call with them a couple days ago? Guess I must have imagined it."

"I guess you must have."

Joan goes back to sorting through her papers, and he continues to stare at her as the puzzle pieces begin to slot slowly and awfully into place.

* * *

She first notices it one week in March.

It’s the little things, at first. The way Owen’s been staying at work later and later each day. The way he’s stopped complaining about Ellie - he hasn’t shut up about her since she _'stole the position that was rightfully his'_ \- and started working alongside her. The way the two of them hunch their heads together over a tablet or stack of paperwork, whispering, only to flinch away the moment she enters the room.

The way he can’t quite meet her eye anymore. When she smiles at him, nudges him with her foot under their shared desk - he pulls away.

She’s probably just not thinking straight, she tries to convince herself. She’s barely sleeping, hardly remembering to eat - of course she’s getting paranoid. All she can think about is Mark, and the worst case scenarios that leave her screaming in the dark.

And this new power, of course. Of all the times to discover she’s just a late blooming atypical- now _really_ isn’t a good time.

It makes a lot of sense, as much as she hates it. She’s read all the literature on trauma triggering and stunting abilities - she _wrote_ half of it, at least - and if Mark’s disappearance is anything, she can tell it’s going to be traumatic. She can imagine herself, five years down the line, breaking down in front of her own therapist about all her own unhealthy coping mechanisms and reactions.

That was one of the worst things about going into psychology: being able to self diagnose. Being self aware seems to be of little help when her own irrationality is concerned.

It had been a shock, the first time it happened. Shaking hands with one of her new patients - a cryokinetic who couldn’t stop freezing water around him - she had been overwhelmed by the image of an iced-over lake. She could see her breath clouding in front of her, feel the chill in her bones.

Hear the ice cracking as she plunged into the water below.

It had been over in a second, left her winded and dizzy, with a headache more like someone trying to drive a nail through her eye.

“You okay, Dr Bright?” the cryokinetic - Manuel - had asked, eyebrows knitted together in a frown. He clearly hadn’t seen anything unusual, except his new therapist having a minor breakdown.

She’d brushed it off as a long day at the office, surprise at the cold temperature of his skin, the heat of the room getting to her - and continued their session as normal.

It took half an hour for him to mention it. How, when he was eleven years old, he had wandered out into the middle of a frozen lake on a dare, and nearly drowned. That was the day his power kicked in, solidifying the water on either side of him to create a tunnel back to the surface.

Joan really had had a breakdown after that. Privately, in the bathroom after the session - she was still a professional, after all.

Atypical. The word still sits awkwardly on her shoulders. She's spent so long in this life, defined by her typicality. And that's been fine by her - she's seen first hand what abilities can do to a person, what they did to Mark - she's never wanted that.

It's only partly a lie.

She imagines calling Mark, grabbing coffee with him. Watching his surprise as he throws his arms round her, only to be overwhelmed by a sudden vision of her past - a teenage summer day, or the first screaming match with their parents, perhaps. How he would look around, bewildered, searching for the source of this new power.

And how she would shrug with a small, pleased grin. _It's me_.

But she can't do that. Can't share this huge, important thing with her brother, missing now for two months. Can't share it with her boyfriend, or her mentor, who might fire her or lock her up or never let her touch them again.

Pushing Owen away is the logical choice. It doesn't even happen on purpose - she's letting everything slide. Her job is a blur of half-written reports and weary faces. Her free time is a rush of frantic calls to anyone who might know anything about Mark’s whereabouts, putting up missing posters, crying into her scotch in an empty bathtub, until she finally exhausts herself enough to sleep.

Her nights are nothing but flashes of unconsciousness punctuated with images of Mark. Floating facedown in the river, or strapped to a sterile table somewhere.

Or on the other side of the world, perfectly safe and unaware of the panic he’s causing.

Before she knows it, a month has passed, and they've barely spoken. Is it his fault? Is it hers? She can't shake the unsettling feeling that they're _both_ avoiding each other.

She should make an effort. She misses him, though she's compartmentalised the emotion beneath a hundred layers of concern and distraction. Misses their easy conversation, waking up with him beside her.

The other side of the bed is cold and hollow now. She's not sure when she got used to him being there, still reaches for him in the dark. Stares at the mural out of her window as she absently sips scalding coffee, remembering cold, syrup-sweet walks by the bay. Awful karaoke nights, and laughing over candlelit take-out when they managed to burn their dinner in distraction.

When did this man slip so thoroughly below her guard?

So she grabs him coffee on the way into work one day. Caramel latte, his every day order. The barista gives her a knowing smile - it's been a while since she's ordered for two.

Owen is already sat at his desk, of course, a frown etched so deep in his features she could imagine he's been sat here, statue-still, since last night.

"Hey," she says softly, coming up behind him and placing the coffee down beside his elbow. He starts, nearly knocking it over.

"Uh, hey," he glances in confusion between the cup and Joan, eyebrows knitting together. "What's up?"

"How long have you been in already?" she asks, perching on the desk in her old position to face him.

"A few hours," he admits, shoulders slumping. He curls his fingers around his coffee, as if it might scare the exhaustion from his bones. "Thanks for this."

"Anytime," Joan tries to pull her lips into a smile, unsure if she quite manages it. "I wanted to- I wanted to apologise. For not being around, much. I've been a pretty terrible girlfriend. It's just- I've been so worried. Mark is- Mark is missing, and I know it could just be him being forgetful, or losing his phone, it's not as if he hasn't vanished before, only to turn up fine and completely oblivious, but- I don't know. I can feel that _something's_ wrong, in my bones. And he-"

She stops speaking suddenly, grips her coffee until the heat makes her fingers ache. As much as she likes Owen - maybe even loves him - she can never tell him that her brother is atypical. She can't trust what he might do with that information.

When she looks up, Owen is staring at her with that look that makes her cheeks warm. Like he wants to wrap in his arms and never let anything hurt her. Like he would open his chest and give her his heart if he thought it might fix the fractures in her own.

But there's something else underneath it. A crestfallen, shivering thing.

Guilt. And fear.

Something inside her goes cold.

"I'm so sorry," he says softly, shifting his chair closer to her and putting a comforting hand on her knee. "I wish you'd told me. It must be awful, not knowing. Is there anything I can do, to help?"

"I-" Her thoughts are turning, jumbled. Anything she wanted to say, had planned for this conversation, has evaporated off her tongue like so much smoke.

"Maybe you should tell Ellie," he continues. "Maybe she can take something off your plate, make things a little easier for you."

That is _not_ something Ellie Wadsworth would even _think_ of doing, and Owen knows it.

Joan hesitates, for just a second. Just a second, and nothing more, before she rests her bare hand on his.

It's been a month, and still every vision feels like falling from a great height, leaving her stomach behind at the top of a cliff. Like plunging into that ice-water lake all over again. Her breath vanishes, the world slips away.

She's walking down a dark corridor. Dimly lit, walls a soot-shade of concrete. Doors at regular intervals, small square windows casting pools of bright halogen light onto the ground.

She stops at one window. Hesitates for a moment, before putting her face to the glass.

For a moment, the figure curled up on the bed inside isn't recogniseable. He's too thin, too pale. His hair is too long, his face too broken. He stares blankly at the wall opposite, not even looking up at the face staring through at him.

But there's no mistaking him: her brother.

The vision vanishes with her shock, the present cascading back to her like Atlas retaking the sky on his shoulders. She gasps, dizzy, stomach roiling though there's nothing inside it to throw up. Her throat is tight, chest heavy, heart beating so fast she thinks it might finally attempt to break out of its cage.

"Joan?" Owen's concern, too genuine, too sharp, cuts through the haze. She stares at him. The man she thought she knew. The man she thought she might _love_.

She's going to be sick.

"Joan? Are you okay? What's wrong?"

"I-" she chokes, "I have to go. I'm sorry- I'm-"

Before she can let her rage spill from her lips, she flees.

* * *

All this leads them here: stood in Joan’s apartment, the kitchen counter and a world between them.

The mural he had commissioned for her glares down at them through the window, and for a moment Owen imagines those painted vines bursting through the glass, wrapping their thorny fingers around his throat and putting him out of his misery.

No such luck.

Joan is speechless with something like fury, shock - opens her mouth, only to find the words lodged in her throat. The tornado spinning her insides to shreds refuses to calm for even a second to let her think.

Silence holds them in its fist, waiting to hear the creak of their bones and hearts finally breaking.

"You're atypical," he says, shattering any illusion he might have had of them simply forgetting what lies between them.

Her face splits with rage. " _'You're atypical'_ ?" she spits. " _T_ _hat's_ really how you want to start this?"

"You've been _lying_ to me, Joan, from the day we met. Lying to Ellie, to the whole agency. What's the point of being an Atypical Monitor if we can't even monitor our own staff? Who knows what chaos you've wreaked on the system, how much you've covered up."

He's saying this all wrong. He's buying time, hands shaking as he buries himself deeper and deeper in this hole. He doesn't _care_ about the agency, doesn't care about Ellie, but it's all his tongue can find to stem the tidal wave building on the other side of the kitchen counter.

"You want to talk about lying, Owen?" She slams her fist down on the marble. "When were you going to tell me you KIDNAPPED MY BROTHER?"

"Kidnapped- is a strong word-"

"Oh, don't you _dare_. You _kidnapped_ my brother and locked him up in some secret AM basement and you've been experimenting on him for _months_."

"You held out on us! You never told us Mark was atypical, and you know you should have-"

"You're not even denying the experiments! When I saw- all I saw was him, in his cell. And I imagined all these terrible things you might have done to him, but there was that small hope that maybe, just maybe, my boyfriend isn't the awful monster I'm making him out to be. Maybe he's got a shred of humanity left in him."

"He's dangerous, Joan."

"My brother is not _dangerous_. He's got a fair level of control, and he can't even _do_ anything on his own!"

Owen doesn't even remember moving, but now they're so close he can smell her vanilla perfume, and the whiskey on her breath.

"You know his control isn't as good as he makes it out to be," he says. Everything is spinning so fast, too fast. When did he start defending Ellie's decisions, the ones he _knows_ in his gut he shouldn't be comfortable with? "And what happens when he's around a pyrokinetic, or an electropath? How long until he accidentally hurts someone, or himself? The safest place for him to be is with the AM, with us."

Her fists are aching, but she refuses to unclench them. If she does she might punch him in the face. "Even if that was true, he should be in Tier 4, maybe," she grits out. "Or Tier 3. But I've never seen him in that building, Owen, not once. So where the fuck is he? Is there some secret Tier 5 I don't know about?"

His silence, the set of his jaw and shining eyes, speak volumes. Even though she'd guessed it, the horror still rolls down her spine like electricity. "There is," her voice shakes. "What do you do there? Experiment on them? Torture them? Do you- do you kill them?"

"No, Joan." He reaches out to take one of her fists, but she draws back as if he's burnt her. He pours every ounce of genuineness and honesty he can into his voice. "We keep them locked in power-dampening cells, safe from each other and themselves. The _experiments_ are just with their powers, seeing the extent of their abilities, how they interact."

"How many abilities Mark can hold at once," she guesses. "How far away he has to be for them to work. How quickly he can get them under control."

"Exactly," he sighs. Maybe he can get her to understand, just maybe. Joan's always been a scientist at heart. "His control has improved _exponentially_ since we took him in. He can manipulate two powers at once, and hold onto them from twenty feet. And that's after only two months of work. That's good, right?"

She blinks at him, aghast. "Taking someone against their will is not _good_ , Owen. Lying to your girlfriend for months is not good. Trying to _gaslight me_ is not fucking good, Owen. Tell me what exactly about this situation you would define as _good_."

"Once Ellie thinks he has enough control, she'll let him go. She's said so, she told me-"

"Are you _really_ that naive? You think Ellie- Ellie Wadsworth, youngest director of the AM to date - would just let Mark walk out of there? With the endless potential for exploitation his ability has? With all the secrets I'm sure he's managed to glean after months of being there?"

"She said..." The words fail before he can bring himself to speak them. He knows what she's saying is true.

Silence reclaims the kitchen, hovers above them like a boot waiting to crush ants. Any movement could bring the world crashing down around them.

"What are you going to do?" he asks eventually, voice heavy and worn out. He can't see any way out of this.

"I'm going to get him out," she says, a steely calm threaded through her tone. "I don't care if I have to break him out myself, if I get locked up instead. I'm getting him out of there."

He's not surprised, he realises. It's a relief, even, to have a certainty to rely on, that Joan Bright will burn bright and fierce and unforgiving for the people she loves.

A group he knows he's excused himself from.

A hint of hesitation flits across her face. "What..." she breathes slowly, unsure. "What are _you_ going to do?"

"About what?"

"About me." She lets her fists loose slowly, threading her fingers together and staring at them to avoid his eye. "About my ability, and- all this."

All the energy has bled from the scene. She is exhausted and scared, and he is weary, uncertain of anything. All he wants is to make things right.

"I... I don't know, Joan. I don't want to- I can't tell Ellie. I can't take the risk that she might lock you up."

"So when it's someone you care about, suddenly it's wrong?" she bites out, a spark of anger returned.

"It's not- it's not like that. Look, I'm sorry. For what it's worth. I was just doing what I was told."

"You can't blame your mistakes on just _following_ _orders_ , Owen. It's _your_ fucked up moral compass."

"Maybe that's true. But that doesn't change the past, and it doesn't change my position. I won't tell Ellie anything because I care about you, and I think she cares enough about you not to think straight. She would see this as a betrayal of her trust of the highest order, lying to her for years, slipping under her nose."

"I've only been an atypical for two months, you know," Joan's mouth pulls, momentarily, into a smirk.

"Really?" he frowns. "You must be-"

"The oldest known person to develop abilities? Yeah, I know. I've read all the literature, Owen. I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I suppressed my own ability, or maybe Mark going missing triggered a latent possibility. It's pretty inconvenient, actually."

"What... what actually is it? If you don't mind me asking."

She levels her gaze at him. He feels her eyes searching his face, as if reading directly into his soul. "You're going to help me break Mark out of the AM," she says. There isn't any room for compromise in her voice. "You agree to that, and I'll tell you anything you like."

For a moment, any thought of words flatlines. He stares at this woman, the woman he loves, would love even if she cast him out right now. Even if she let the rage he knows hasn't vanished loose on him with screaming and fists and nails - he would deserve every blow.

"I'll help you," he whispers. "I'd do anything for you, Joan."

She presses her lips in a grim, satisfied line. Turns to the kitchen cabinet behind her and pulls out a second glass.

"Then we're going to need drinks."

**Author's Note:**

> i've kinda been pictureing matt murdock's apartment from daredevil as joan's apartment?? solely because of the window-view i think.  
> anyway! happy holidays again!!
> 
> find me on tumblr [@edelwoodsouls](https://edelwoodsouls.tumblr.com)


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